Joplin, Mo. - The Joplin Area Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2024 of Keith Adams, Ray Harding, Shally Lundien, and Brandon Williams was inducted on Thursday evening at the Roxy in downtown Joplin.


Keith Adams
At first, Keith Adams couldn't believe he was in the Class of 2024 for the Joplin Sports Authority Hall of Fame.
"Honestly, I'm not sure why I'm in there," he said. "I told Jared (Bruggeman, JSA Executive Director) maybe he gave the committee something to drink.
"I guess when you sit back and look at it, I've touched an awful lot of lives through officiating. I hope it's been a positive impact on them."
Adams was born upstairs at his grandmother's house in Neosho 95 years ago, delivered by a midwife who was related to George Washington Carver.
He was raised in Joplin, and sports—basketball in particular—have always been a part of his life.
"I played basketball at South Junior High School, then at Joplin High School and Joplin Junior College (now Missouri Southern)," Adams said. "On the way, I played in the church league softball and progressed from that into the industrial league.
Adams officiated basketball and volleyball for many years. He believes he was paid $10 for the first basketball game he officiated in 1949, and he continued on the basketball court for about 34 years.
"I started officiating after I got out of junior college," he said. "Along the way, there was a shortage of football officials. Tom Grant, who was an insurance salesman, was really gung-ho on officiating, and he talked a bunch of us basketball officials into taking a class (on football officiating)."
But football didn't last long for Adams.
"I officiated football for about three years," he said. "Until one day it was freezing rain, and I thought, 'what are you doing here.' So I quit."
The next sport in Adams' officiating career was volleyball. He continued to officiate volleyball after retiring from basketball
Adams can't imagine his life without sports.
"Sports has been a big part of my life," said Adams, who was a JSA Hall of Fame Committee member until resigning earlier this year. "I was blessed to be able to play softball with my sons Darieus and Doug.
"I played slow pitch softball on our hospital team in my 70s (as a pitcher). I caught one (batted ball) off my right shin. We were in the E League, which is the bottom of the leagues. The team we were playing didn't have enough players and they picked up an A (League) player. He cracked that thing and hit me right in the shin. It sounded like it was hitting a bat.
"What hurt me the worst was I picked the ball up and threw it to first. They only had one umpire back then behind the plate, and he called him safe. He was out by a good step. That hurt my feelings more than my leg."
The Adams family, Keith, his wife Alice and their sons, have always been big Missouri Southern fans.
"We traveled with Southern's basketball team to Puerto Rico twice, to the Bahamas twice," Keith said. "We went to Hawaii with them and went to Phoenix. We've traveled quite a bit with them."


Ray Harding
Ray Harding was the quarterback on Missouri Southern's 1972 NAIA Division II football championship team.
Then he had a successful coaching career, capped by a 16-year stint at Carthage High School.
That combination earns him membership in the Joplin Sports Authority Hall of Fame Class of 2024.
Harding's journey to become a college football quarterback was unorthodox, to say the least.
As an Army brat, he graduated from the Tehran American School in Tehran, Iran.
"What my dad did was work in a particular section in Tehran, and then the school itself was on the north end of town," Harding said. "Basically, that's where all the American kids went. That's where I met my wife (Cindy). Her dad was the superintendent of the school. That's where we ran across each other."
Concerning football, "We played over there on the embassy grounds 7-man intramural football among the high school kids," he said. "There was nobody to play but ourselves.
"There was an officer, a captain, who had gone to East Texas State University, and through him, he actually got me to go to East Texas State to play football. That basically was from his observance of our intramural football program."
Harding spent a red-shirt season at East Texas State (now Texas A&M-Commerce) before transferring to Cowley County Community College in Arkansas City, Kan. One year later, he transferred to Missouri Southern and passed for 3,754 yards and 40 touchdowns in three seasons.
He threw for 1,578 yards in the Lions' championship season, which pretty much came out of the blue. They went 4-6 in 1971 under new head coach Jim Frazier.
"It was pretty interesting to say the least," Harding said. "We were confident because we had a lot of starters back. But you never know what to expect. We traveled up to Fort Hays and won that first game (40-15). The confidence factor just built and built after that."
The Lions went 10-0 during the season, spiced by a 7-0 victory at UNLV.
The Lions won their first playoff game 24-6 over Doane (Neb.) at Junge Field, and they also had home field advantage for the championship game against Northwestern (Iowa).
The Lions trailed 14-7 in the fourth quarter when Harding and Kerry Anders connected for a 58-yard touchdown pass.
"It was a short crossing route," Harding said. "I got the ball to him, and he turned the corner and was gone."
The Lions went for the 2-point conversion, but Harding's pass went incomplete, and they trailed 14-13 with 3:21 remaining.
Northwestern lined up to punt about two minutes later, but the punter mishandled a high snap, and Sam Keoloha fell on the ball in the end zone. The Lions added the conversion run with 1:28 left, and the defense made a final stop to preserve the 21-14 victory.
Harding's coaching career began with three years at Mulvane (Kan.) before coming to Carthage, where he was head coach from 1979-94) and he retired from Carthage in 2004.
After Carthage, Harding worked for 10 years at Fort Leonard Wood near Waynesville.
"I took one deployment to Iraq, and then in 2014 I shut her down," he said. "And Cindy and I moved back to Joplin."


Shally Lundien
Success in sports came early for Shally Lundien.
"I was the first girl wrestler in the area in the late 1970s, early '80s," she said. "I wrestled the boys in various tournaments and won third place in the state meet in my weight class when I was in third grade."
Her primary sport later changed to softball, and she became an outstanding player and coach. That earns her a spot in the Class of 2024 for the Joplin Sports Authority Hall of Fame.
Lundien, a 1991 Carl Junction High School graduate, became an All-American at both Crowder College and Missouri Southern. She also played for the USA Softball Junior College team that competed in the Canada Cup in 1993.
In 1995, she started every game as Missouri Southern finished 45-8 and advanced to the regional tournament before being eliminated.
Lundien batted .430 that season and led the team with 39 runs, 74 hits, 47 runs batted in and seven triples. She also was second with 18 doubles and struck out just three times all season.
She picked up a lot of hardware that season, being named the MIAA Player of the Year, Missouri Southern Female Athlete of the year and the Ken B. Jones Award as the MIAA's top female student-athlete. She also was an academic all-American at MSSU as a biology major.
Lundien learned her softball skills through youth leagues and travel teams, as the high school had not started its softball program.
"When I was real young, I played league ball in Carl Junction," she said. "Then, as we got older, we had one travel team in the MKO (Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma) League. Once that kind of fell apart, we turned into the Webb City A's. It was mostly Webb City girls, and I played and there was Joplin and Neosho girls and we traveled."
Playing travel ball is how Crowder made connections with Lundien. After two years with the Lady 'Riders, Lundien transferred to Missouri Southern and played for coach Pat Lipira.
"Honestly, I wanted to play at University of West Florida because I wanted to be a marine biologist," Lundien said. "But they didn't really have anything to offer me. Of course, Coach Lipira, my first year at Crowder, was saying, 'I'm interested again.' So, it was kind of a running joke that I could learn to be a marine biologist in the swimming pool at Missouri Southern. I was just a biologist instead."
After her playing career, she compiled a 120-120 record in five seasons as head coach at Pittsburg State.
She went back to school for her education degree and coached high school teams at Frontenac (Kan.), Carl Junction, Seneca, Carthage and Joplin. She had a second-place state tournament finish at both Frontenac and Seneca.
Today, Lundien is Director of Admissions at Crowder.
"Back to my home starting grounds," she said. "My office that I work in was a parking lot that we practiced on when I was here as a player."


Brandon Williams
Brandon Williams' career in the National Football League ended the way every player hopes.
He is a Super Bowl champion.
Williams, former All-American at Missouri Southern before a 10-year NFL career, is part of the Joplin Sports Authority Hall of Fame Class of 2024.
He was the third-round choice of the Baltimore Ravens in the 2013 NFL Draft (No. 94 overall). The Ravens chose not to sign him after the 2021 season, and Williams was accepting the realization that his career might be over.
But late in the 2022 season, the Kansas City Chiefs gave him a call, and they signed him to their practice squad on Nov. 30.
"I was just chilling on my couch," Williams said during an interview on Glenn Close Radio in Baltimore. "I definitely didn't see this coming, but it's totally a blessing. And I'm going to take in every moment."
Just eight days later, Williams was promoted to the active roster, and he played in five regular-season games and three playoff games, capped by the 38-35 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 57.
Williams' career came full circle by ending with the Chiefs. He played high school football at Rockwood Summit near St. Louis and college football at Missouri Southern.
He was named Suburban South defensive player of the year after making 99 tackles at Rockwood Summit his junior year, and he transferred to Harmony Prep School in Cincinnati for his senior year.
At Missouri Southern, he was an immediate impact player his freshman year with 38 tackles. He missed the 2009 season because of a back injury, but he was an all-MIAA player from 2010-12, including the conference's defensive player of the year in 2012 after collecting 68 tackles, 16.5 tackles for loss, 8.5 quarterback sacks, and 8 QB hurries. He was named national defensive player of the year by D2football.com.
Williams played seven games in his rookie year with the Ravens and logged a fumble recovery in his debut against the Buffalo Bills.
In the next eight seasons (2014-21), Williams missed only 12 games, and he started in all but two of the 116 games he played. His best two statistical seasons came back-to-back when he made 53 tackles in 2015 and 51 in 2016.
His career totals: 184 solo and 325 total tackles, 7.0 sacks, 34 tackles for loss, 11 passes defended, two forced fumbles, five fumble recoveries, and one touchdown.
That touchdown came in Week 15 in 2017 during a 27-10 victory over the winless Cleveland Browns.
Midway through the third quarter, Ravens punter Sam Koch pinned the Browns at their 4-yard line. The Ravens' Za'Darius Smith forced a fumble as he sacked quarterback DeShone Kizer, and the ball bounced just outside the goal line.
Williams grabbed the ball with his left arm and moved it to his right arm as he scooted to get in the end zone.
"Man, my mind just went blank," Williams told baltimoreravens.com. "I'm just happy I got the touchdown. The ball was outside a little bit, and I had to switch arms and scoot over in (the end zone).
"I'm just happy my teammate 'Z' hit the ball out of his hand, and I was able to make a play on it. That's just how our defense is. We play off one another. So I'm happy for my guys, and we all come together."